Unified Communications: Opinions

As the dust settles from the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, here are four trends worth looking at based on some products that were announced at the show. On my radar screen for the year:

Whether fixed-mobile convergence is for you in the near-term depends in part on how you define it, but for most, there's no rush.

There's no doubt about it - the way we communicate is changing. The advent of the Internet and the proliferation of mobile phones has left us all with at least three different phone numbers (work, home and mobile), multiple email addresses, online profiles and instant messenger clients.

While it's still early days, Australian companies are quickly warming to UC. In fact, Gartner research vice-president, Geoff Johnson, believes we are just as advanced as any economy in Europe or North America. However, as no one vendor is able to provide a complete UC solution - and are not expected to do so for the next three years - there is a vital need for partnering and cooperation between suppliers over the coming years.

VoiceCon 2008 wrapped up in the US last week and the conference was jam-packed with news, announcements, and observable trends so we will spend the next several editions reviewing a few highlights. In his keynote address, Mike Rhodin, Lotus Software general manager gave five predictions about global unified communications and in a follow-up interview, Larry got the chance to find out how IBM will invest up to US$1 billion to help meet the changing business communications requirements.

You hear a lot these days about two topics: mobility and collaboration. Unified communication and collaboration (UCC) is getting promoted by vendors ranging from Microsoft and IBM to Cisco, Avaya and Nortel.